


Through A Glass, Darkly

by chaletian



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-25
Updated: 2010-05-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 17:12:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaletian/pseuds/chaletian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rodney wakes up to find the power dead and people disappearing (on the one hand, including John, so that's bad, bad, very bad, but on the other hand also including Kavanagh, so it's not like it's all sucky). Nothing works. Zelenka keeps swearing at him. Lorne has not managed to instantly fix the situation with some arcane military know-how. At least Ronon has come to appreciate that Rodney's hypoglycaemia is REAL and DANGEROUS. Which totally isn't the point because something's messing with Atlantis and they're probably all going to die.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Through A Glass, Darkly

Rodney knows something's wrong as soon as he wakes up. For a start, it's dark. It's never dark usually; it's like Atlantis knows they're awake, and so always gives them light. But that's not the giveaway. The giveaway is that he's alone in the narrow, standard-issue bed. He can't remember the last time he woke up by himself.

He sits up, scrubs a hand over his face, then picks up the comm unit off the shelf by the bed, and taps it. "Sheppard," he says, and he's laidback, of course he's laidback, he's Rodney McKay, genius (squared, or possibly cubed), he's not going to panic because there's no light and no colonel in his bed (Sheppard's a wanderer anyway, practically an insomniac, and fine, just because he's always been back in bed by the time Rodney's woken up, well, that doesn't mean anything).

But there's no response, no… nothing, not even static. The comms are dead. No, Rodney corrects himself. _His_ comm is dead. He shouldn't extrapolate too far; he's always having to tell Zelenka that (he ignores the existence of too many conversations to count where Zelenka has said, "But, Rodney, there is no evidence to support that conclusion; you are merely taking two data points and building entire _fantasy_ around them!" and he has said something extremely rude in return, and been right, always right).

But when he leaves their quarters, it's clear that it's not just Rodney and he's not panicking, he's still definitely not panicking, but Atlantis is dark except for dim, dim light peering through the stained glass that decorates the external walls, and nobody's comms are working; nothing's working. The consoles are dead. There's no power, not even to separate tech like the LSDs.

People are rushing around, and there's a routine, everyone knows where they're supposed to go, except Rodney, who stands around gaping until he decides to go to the control room, which is when he remembers that that's where he's _supposed_ to go, which is just more evidence that he's NOT PANICKING and is in fact QUITE CALM and IN CONTROL.

The control slips slightly when he reaches the control room, to find everything still dark, though there's more light because of the windows albeit still not enought to be of much use. Someone's got out some power generators and flashlights, but obviously they were useless, because they've been pushed to the side of the room.

"What about those?" says Rodney, waving at them, just in case people have been monumentally stupid which tragically isn't even that unlikely, but Major Lorne raises an eyebrow, and Rodney glares and shuts up.

"Where's the Colonel?" asks Lorne, making controlled hand gestures at the Marines; a mute language Rodney has partly absorbed but mostly (like everything else that is beneath him) ignored.

"He's not here?" Rodney looks around wildly, squinting his eyes at the various military personnel, even though he knows none of them is John, would recognise John anywhere, as if anyone wouldn't with his hair and his ears and his attitude. "I thought he was here! He's the military commander, I thought he was here! He's supposed to be in charge!" He carries on in this vein for a little while, but Lorne has moved on and is addressing the assembled Marines, saying things like "unexplained power outage" and "fan out" and "get people to the mess" and "Colonel Sheppard is unaccounted for," like John isn't just being heroic somewhere.

Then Chuck and Zelenka are making noises at the controls, and Rodney's suddenly completely focused on the issue at hand, and makes Lorne send Marines out to the rooms where they keep the ZPM and the naquadah generators, and that tricksy Ancient junction box that kept doing the Ancient equivalent of blowing a fuse every few hours the first month they were on Atlantis.

Everything takes longer, much longer, because the transporters aren't working, nothing's working, and it's dark, and people are starting to freak out, especially when they realise more people are missing. Miko's crying because she says Simpson was literally right next to her and she turned round and the other scientist was gone, just gone. Ronon's vanished too, and Rodney is unspeakably relieved to arrive in the mess to see Teyla calming some of the civilians, nodding to him gravely across the room.

He heads back to the control room, to find some of the Marines returned.

"…some kind of Wraith attack?" Lorne is asking. He seems bewildered, which Rodney rather resents, because he's feeling bewildered enough for everyone and Lorne's a _soldier_ and is supposed to be able to cope with things like this. Like all the power going and all the light going and all the _people_ going.

All right. Fine. Not all the people. But the most important one, and to Rodney's way of thinking, John is fairly useful (his freakish genetics, for example) and surprisingly adept at getting people out of trouble (useful, given how surprisingly adept he is at getting people _into_ trouble), and thus worth about fifty of, say, Kavanagh. Who also seems to be missing, now he comes to think about it, but in a crisis situation that's practically a bonus.

"Pretty weird attack," says one of the soldiers. Stackhouse? Stackley? They all look alike to Rodney. "If they wanted to kill us or cull us or what-the-fuck-ever, coulda done it by now. We're sitting ducks." They all nod solemnly.

There's a commotion in the gateroom below, and from one of the corridors Ronon appears, his stun gun in one hand.

"That any use?" asks Lorne, but Ronon shakes his head.

"Doesn't work," he says briefly, and tucks it in the back of his pants. Behind him, Kavanagh appears, bitching and whining and looking out of breath.

"Where the hell have you been?" demands Rodney, trotting down the stairs. Ronon shrugs.

"Just appeared in one of the empty labs with him," and he jerks a thumb behind him. "What's going on?"

"EXCUSE ME, MY ARM HAS BEEN BROKEN IF SOMEONE COULD KINDLY PAY SOME ATTENTION, EVEN THOUGH I KNOW YOU ALL HATE ME!" shouts Kavanagh, and glares poisonously at everyone when Ronon follows Rodney back up the steps and joins the conversation with Lorne. No-one notices as a medic ushers him away, still glaring poisonously, but now whimpering as well.

"So, what, people are just being moved around Atlantis?" asks Lorne, scratching his head. "What the hell's going on here?"

"Someone's playing with us," says Ronon.

"Well, it's got to be the Wraith," says Rodney, "unless there's a whole other species that WANTS TO KILL US that we haven't even MET yet."

"Could be the Genii, maybe?" offers Lorne, but Rodney's already shaking his head.

"They don't have the technology to do all this."

"What's wrong with our systems? Why's the power down?" Rodney would like to rant and roar and shout that these are stupid questions and Lorne should be doing something more constructive, but unfortunately they're fairly key questions that he doesn't happen to be able to answer.

"I don't happen to be able to answer that," he says haughtily, an attitude that lasts about 0.6 seconds under the full beam of Ronon's dead look. "I don't know. We can't work it out. Nothing's wrong – nothing's physically damaged, I mean. Not that we can see. It could be a computer virus, but it would have to be a damned good one to shut us down instantaneously without anyone seeing any signs beforehand, and even then things like the LSDs should—the jumpers! Someone should check the jumpers!" He makes a leap for the stairs, but Lorne catches his arm.

"Already checked. Dead like everything else."

"We should stop saying stuff's dead," says Rodney grumpily. "It's a bad image." He sits down, leans against a console, and wraps his arms around his knees.

"You OK, McKay?" asks Ronon, but Rodney can't even work up the energy to say something rude to him, because everything _is_ dead and he can't work out why, and he's terribly, terribly afraid that he can't fix it, and what's even the _point_ of being Rodney McKay, genius (squared, or even cubed), if he can't fix this problem? He sighs dolefully, then looks up as Ronon shoves something into his hand. It's a power bar. "Blood sugar," says Ronon, seriously, as if he means it, as if it's not at all the case that those words have NEVER EVER in the ENTIRE HISTORY of Atlantis left his mouth without a smirk attached due to whatever slanderous and possibly actionable LIES John had told him about Rodney's hypoglycaemia.

The power bar (chocolate; and Rodney resolves to investigate at some point in the future – when the light and power and military commander are back – the stash that Ronon's obviously got hidden somewhere) helps, and Rodney says cheerfully, "Well, at least it doesn't look like people are actually been taken away, per se, just moved about. So we should send out search parties to look for missing people."

"Already on it," says Lorne. "We've made up a list of missing personnel."

"How many?" asks Ronon, and Lorne glances at the list.

"About twenty," he says, then readjusts, "no, wait, you and Kavanagh came back," (they look at Rodney judgementally but he totally did not just sigh like it was a shame, he's not a monster, for God's sake, OK maybe a tiny sigh, but it's not like there's a law against _exhaling_), "and so did Percy and Jones." He tots up the remaining names, accurately this time. "Fifteen left."

Rodney flaps a hand. "Piece of cake," he says airily, as if Atlantis isn't huge and still largely unexplored and, oh yes, partly underwater in places.

"Yeah," says Lorne drily, "won't take more than a minute or two," but Rodney's stopped paying attention and has gone to badger Zelenka and some twink of a minion he seems to have acquired that Rodney can't remember having seen before. They're lying on their backs under a console, and Rodney joins them. Zelenka moves around some crystals (completely dark and unresponsive) and Rodney tells him that it's completely pointless, then moves different crystals (also completely dark and unresponsive) while Zelenka swears at him in Czech. They're not achieving anything, but at least it's relaxing.

"Sheppard's still missing," says Rodney, after a few enjoyable minutes. "I should go and look for him."

"You and which army?" says Zelenka, readjusting his glasses and sitting up. "One hint of danger and you are screaming like little girl, Rodney." (Slander, slander, everywhere he went people slandered him.) The twink smirks and Rodney sneers at him until he disappears back under the console.

"I am extremely brave," he says, and Zelenka shrugs and mutters something that is bound to, again, be actionable, and Rodney thinks longingly of the lifeless little recorder in his pants pocket that he uses for precisely this sort of thing in preparation for the day when he lands a giant massive law suit on Zelenka, evidence for which he has been gathering feverishly for quite some time. But thoughts were useless; action was needed.

Rodney jumps to his feet, and is about to demand that Lorne send him somewhere useful to look for his fallen lov- fallen COMRADE (totally comrade, Rodney knows all about don't ask, don't tell, though he can't imagine why anyone would look at John with his hair and his ears and his attitude and DEAR SWEET LORD HIS MOUTH and even _need_ to ask, and they share quarters for God's sake, and he still can't quite work out how John's come to the conclusion that EVERYONE on Atlantis is capable of such cognitive dissonance that they can simultaneously cling to the largely ludicrous belief that their military commander is straight whilst accepting the evidence that, oh yes, he is totally living with another man with whom he has had butt sex not once, not twice, but three times (admittedly the last time under some pretty unusual circumstances involving a plate of mashed potato, some offworld moonshine and an Ancient device that somehow mimics the sound of a lawnmower whilst vibrating at some not completely uninteresting frequencies), in the Gateroom, not that there's any actual evidence for that being circulated amongst the general population. Hopefully), when the fallen comrade suddenly appears, as Ronon did, in the Gateroom. Of course he's gushing blood and limping and looking quite like he's about to die (as usual), so Rodney's thoughts do not go to the mashed potato/moonshine/lawnmower sextoy memory, but instead run in panicky circles whilst he yells for a doctor, and dashes down the stairs just in time to catch John as he collapses.

John's covered in blood (his own, it's bound to be his own), and, as mentioned, looks like he's about to die, but he grins up at Rodney.

"So, this is weird," he says, and passes out.

"I hate everyone," says Rodney, clutching his comrade, and knowing, with dire certainty that things are only going to get weirder, because that's exactly how shitty his life is.

oOo

Rodney keeps close to John all the way to the infirmary, airing a good number of grievances against the Colonel on the subject of SERIOUS BODILY HARM (self-inflicted) and SERIOUS BODILY HARM (not adequately defended against), not to mention SERIOUS BODILY HARM (could have been avoided quite easily if only someone could resist the urge to make smart aleck comments). He doesn't at all curl his fingers into John's hair because what is he, some kind of sentimental idiot?

When they finally get to the infirmary, all is chaos, and Rodney sneers at anyone who comes close and glares death rays at Kavanagh (pale and still whimpering, albeit in possession of a new arm, so frankly he should be back at work instead of malingering). Carson rolls his eyes as he sees them approach.

"Eh, Colonel, lad, why am I not surprised?" he says, and bustles over. Rodney waves a hand.

"Just do your voodoo thing," he says. "He's DYING, now is no time for jokes."

It turns out, however, that John isn't dying, and once Carson has mopped up the blood and given him a new leg and some jello in a cup, he's looking pretty chipper again, which is great because it gives Carson time to attend to Rodney's panic attack ("Oh my God! We've got no power! You can't fix anyone with no power! OH MY GOD, WE REALLY ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!") and point out that while he (Rodney) may need various ZPMs and naquadah generators and AA batteries etc etc to perform even the most basic bloody parts of his job, he (Carson) is not quite so limited.

Nothing perks up Rodney like having to defend True, Real Science, particularly when he has John watching, propped up on a bed eating his jello and looking interested, and he's about three paragraphs in to a spirited rebuttal when a marine (another one! They are so many of them! No wonder the mess never seems to have enough chocolate muffins…) staggers in, looking pale and nauseous. Rodney is, in the defence of True, Real Science, quite prepared to ignore him and carry on, but Carson dashes off, which is clearly proof (if proof were needed which, frankly, not!) that Rodney is Completely Right (As Usual) and Carson damned well knows it (runaway loser).

He starts a campaign to steal John's jello, but has barely got off an opening salvo when Carson drags the Marine up to them.

"What is it?" asks John, looking all business-like and a tiny bit hot.

"Sir, I—" The marine appears to be incapable of forming a coherent sentence, which Rodney assumes is par for the course, although John appears to have higher expectations.

"Report, Robinson!"

The marine swallows nervously. "Sir, there's something I think you need to see. I can't… I can't explain it." He glances across. "I think Dr McKay should see it too."

So, after Rodney's had a tiny, barely-worth-mentioning freak-out about John going _anywhere_ ("Are you INSANE? He's just lost HALF HIS BLOOD!"), at which Carson had demonstrated by means of crudely drawn diagrams that John had mostly only lost the blood that belonged in the leg that had subsequently been replaced, and Rodney had begrudgingly admitted that he had a point, they go to see whatever it is that Corporal Robinson has found-

Which turns out to be an Ancient hologram, which has some unexpected, unconnected power source that Rodney is flat on his back investigating in the space of a second and a half, and in which he is so absorbed it takes three cycles of the message before he actually registers what the hologram is telling them.

Things get a bit hazy after that.

There's some shouting, and maybe a bit of weeping (later claimed to be a totally unsubstantiated rumour), and a lot of outright disbelief, and an odd moment with Rodney swinging his leg at the knee with a frantic expression, shouting, "IS IT EVEN SUPPOSED TO DO THAT?" while everyone stares at him, and John says, "What, _move_? Pretty sure."

After things have calmed down a bit, John orders an emergency senior staff meeting in the conference room, and once he's established that three missing scientists and a junior airman have got back to the main part of the city, and there's no reason not to be optimistic about the others doing the same, and that nothing – at the moment – seems to be in any imminent danger of killing them all, as far as they can tell, they get down to the part where they appear to be dolls.

oOo

"Sitrep," says John, jogging up the stairs into the control room. Rodney's already hunched over his laptop, and he flaps a hand that's McKay-speke for Don't interrupt me now, I'm doing something terrifyingly important with my massive brain, which John, as habit dictates, ignores. "Rodney."

"Not now, Sheppard!" says Rodney in his tetchiest voice.

"Ro-o-odney," says John again, deliberately drawling in the way he knows annoys Rodney most of all, and hey, it works, and Rodney spins round and glares at him.

"What!"

"Was just wondering if you'd maybe like to tell me what's going on?" John asks patiently.

Rodney looks only a tiny bit crestfallen. "Oh. That. Uh – OK." He points at the big screen behind him, where a schematic of the city has been brought up. It narrows in on a point on the outermost south east corner. "So, ten minutes ago, two Wraith darts managed to get through our shield – which to be honest seems to be completely useless and I'm not surprised the Ancients basically lost the war, and yes, we're going over the programming and power requirements with a fine toothcomb," he adds, forestalling John's next question. "We think they beamed something out of these three rooms." He points again at the schematic, which this time has been narrowed down to a series of about half a dozen interconnecting rooms."

"Beamed _what_ out?" asks John. "And was there anyone down there?"

"No," puts in Chuck, "everyone's accounted for."

"What's down there? I mean, y'know, before it got beamed up."

Rodney's shaking his head. "No idea. We hadn't gotten round to looking in those rooms yet – could be anything. Zelenka's looking through the Ancient database to see if they've got anything recorded as being there." He looks grumpy. "Knowing our luck, Colonel, it was probably the rooms where they made the ZPMs." There's no particular evidence that such a room exists, but Rodney's been positing its existence since they arrived, and it's now ranked at the top of his personal fantasies, his own private holy grail.

John raises an eyebrow. "Um. Is that likely?"

Zelenka glances across from the console he's working on. "No." There's clear evidence that this is going to descend into Polite, Gentlemanly, Academic Debate #812 between the two scientists (because there are signs, giant flashing signs, that _everyone_ recognises by now), and John waves a hand in front of Rodney's face.

"Hey! Focus, McKay!" Rodney mutters something uncomplimentary under his breath, counterpoint to the muffled Czech coming from the other side of the room, and gestures to his laptop.

"I'm pretty sure that whatever this was, they knew what they were looking for. Atlantis has intermittent bursts of power all over the place, and we still have no idea about half of what's here. This room," he stabs the screen, "had a power surge when we first came to Atlantis, and there's been a steady flow of power ever since."

"So, how come we never…"

"Investigated? It's nothing, the power usage. No more than a few laptops' worth. In the scale of things, this was way down on the list of things that were worth looking into."

John's starting to look impatient. "Yeah, but what was _down_ there? What the hell did they take? And, by the way, yeah, we're gonna need some sort of plan to get it back."

"Well, that's sort of your purview, isn't it, Captain Obvious," says Rodney acidly, fingers flying over his keyboard. "Go and use your military might while I find out what they've taken." He looks up. "Oh. Yeah, probably should go and actually have a look." He starts to gather up his laptop, but John grabs his arm and taps his comm.

"Lorne, have a team go down to the affected areas and report back to McKay about whatever's down there. Zelenka, you go with them. Keep us posted."

Zelenka hurries off, and Rodney watches him leave, a mildly offended look on his face. "I wanted to go and look," he objected.

John pats him on the shoulder, then points to the schematics still on the big screen. "Seen how far away they nearest transporter is, Rodney?" Rodney sees.

"Ah. Well. It's good experience for Zelenka. Some field work would probably help him develop some kind of rudimentary scientific skills." He sits back down, opens the laptop. "Well, I'll just sit here and…."

"Plan how we get onto the Hive ship those darts belong to, and rescue our… whatever."

Rodney looks uneasy at the suggestion. "Really. Are you… sure? It's probably just the Ancients' version of, I don't know, foosball or something."

"I love foosball," says John, which comes as actually no surprise whatsoever.

Rodney adopts an expression of wisdom and common sense. "Everyone loves foosball, Colonel," he lies, "but is it worth risking our lives for?"

"I thought you said it could be stuff to make ZPMs?" parries John and damn! A hit, a palpable hit!

"Mmnrgh," says Rodney, and they start making a plan, which is aided by the fact that the Hive ship's hyperdrive capability has, according to Chuck, randomly stopped working, leaving them chugging slowly away from the planet.

oOo

Rodney's got his face buried in his hands. "It's like some kind of Cartesian nightmare!" he wails, which is great except no-one's quite sure what he means.

"I think it's kind of like that film," says John. "Y'know, the one with the pills and the machines and Keanu Reeves."

"I hate Keanu Reeves," moans Rodney, then looks marginally more cheerful. "Hey, Keanu Reeves is probably a complete figment of our programming!" Except this leads to, "Oh my God, we're PROGRAMMED!" and they're all back where they started, apart from the part where all the lights come on and the power's back.

oOo

"It's a miniature Atlantis," says John blankly.

"It does appear to be," concurs Teyla.

"Huh," says Ronon.

Rodney looks at the miniature Atlantis, sitting in the middle of a Wraith holding bay, brightly glowing from being _looked at_ by Sheppard apparently (Ancient devices are ALL SLUTS). He looks at the dead Wraith lackeys cluttering up the corridors behind them and calculates the odds of there being more, lots, lots more, on their way RIGHT NOW.

"I hate everyone in the world." Then, "It's a DOLLS HOUSE? We risked LIFE AND LIMB for a DOLLS HOUSE?"

John shrugs. "Might be a dolls house that makes ZPMs," he offers. Rodney just glares at him. (Death glares, why hasn't he invented them yet? Why? He needs to get right on that.) "Depending on how accurate it is, it could be a security risk," John says and this is undeniably true, and Rodney's about to start working out the best way to get a fairly giant miniature Atlantis out of a Hive ship, when his LSD beeps at him. He looks down, expecting about three hundred Wraith to be converging on their position, and is quite surprised to see a small message has appeared on the screen.

\- THIS IS COLONEL SHEPPARD OF ATLANTIS. PLEASE IDENTIFY YOURSELVES. -

He shows it to John. They stare at it for a moment. It beeps again.

PLEASE IDENTIFY YOURSELVES. WE MEAN YOU NO HARM.

Almost immediately it beeps again.

\- WE MEAN YOU NO HARM? WHAT? OF COURSE WE MEAN THEM NO HARM, WE'RE THE SIZE OF… OH MY GOD, I HAVE NO IDEA. SOMEONE FIND ME A TAPE MEASURE! -

\- YEAH, RODNEY… THINK THE TAPE MEASURES MIGHT BE TO SCALE. -

\- OH, WONDERFUL. YES. LOVELY. WE'RE PROBABLY THE SIZE OF NANITES. WE'RE PROBABLY GOING TO GET EATEN BY A SPACE DOG THAT'S NOT EVEN GOING TO NOTICE. I KNEW I SHOULD NEVER HAVE GOT UP THIS MORNING. -

\- WHAT, SO YOU WERE IN BED WHEN WE GOT EATEN BY THE SPACE DOG? WOULD THAT HAVE HELPED IN SOME WAY? -

\- THERE ARE NO SPACE DOGS! SHUT UP ABOUT SPACE DOGS! AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW IF THIS WORKING, BY THE WAY. ALSO, WE COULDN'T HAVE TAKEN TWO MINUTES TO FIND ANOTHER VOICE RECORDER? I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW I HAD SOME EXTREMELY POTENT EVIDENCE ON ZELENKA RECORDED ON THIS THING, WHICH I HAVE HAD TO SACRIFICE. IF IT COMES DOWN TO THE WIRE WHEN I BRING MY LAWSUIT, I WILL -

I WONDER IF THEY HAVE NANITE-SIZED COURTS?

\- I HATE EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD. -

\- WHAT ABOUT NANITE-SIZED JUDGES? HEY, MAYBE WE CAN BUILD MORE PEOPLE WITH THIS THING. MAYBE WE CAN BUILD YOU A TINY NANITE-SIZED KEANU REEVES. -

\- YOU ARE NEVER GETTING BACK INTO OUR QUARTERS. EVER. -

\- WE COULD BUILD YOU A TINY NANITE-SIZED SPOCK. -  
\- WITH TINY POINTY EARS. -  
\- AND A TINY BLUE UNIFORM. -

\- WELL. MAYBE. -

"There are tiny versions of ourselves inside," says Rodney.

"Looks that way," says John.

"I really don't know what to do with that," says Rodney.

"Yeah," says John.

"Also, we appear to share a room," says Rodney.

"Uh," says John.

"They're probably short on space," says Rodney.

"Yeah," says John. "Space."

The LSD beeps again.

\- LOOK, IS ANYONE THERE? ANYONE? BUELLER? -

Rodney fiddles with various bits of hardware, grabs the dictaphone that Woolsey gave Ronon, and strings everything to the LSD.

"Uh, this is Rodney McKay. The real McKay," he adds, just so everyone's clear.

\- WHO ARE YOU CALLING REAL, YOU DOUBTLESS OVERSIZED IMPOSTER? -

"You do know that I can crush you like a tiny, nanite-sized bug, you… you… charlatan!" John snatches the equipment away from him.

"This is John Sheppard," he says.

\- HUH. WEIRD. -

"Yeah. You could say that."

So John and tiny nanite-sized John have a conversation about the situation and Rodney pisses off Ronon by instructing him in the best way to move the Atlantis dolls house…

\- ACTUALLY, YOU GIANT MORON, THIS IS A SOCIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENT. -

"Sociology! Pfft!"

\- I KNOW. WHO COMES UP WITH THIS DRIVEL? I SOMETIMES THINK THE ANCIENTS HAD FLUFF FOR BRAINS. -

"Idiots everywhere," says Rodney.

\- ABSOLUTELY. -

… and they take it back to Atlantis. The big one.

It doesn't open, even though Rodney tries his hardest, conducting a bitchy conversation with his tiny nanite-sized alter ego via voice recorder and a modulating programme he's written. There should be video and audio feed to the model Atlantis, but the systems are damaged. In the end, they leave it be whilst the tiny people have an existential crisis, because they seem to be pretty self-aware and it should be up to them what happens next.

oOo

"So, what happens now?" asks John moodily, staring out of the window that he now knows leads to a totally fake scene of water beyond the balcony. "What do we do?"

Teyla looks confused. "I don't understand how all this works. How is that we went off world?"

"VR," says Rodney, looking up from the computer screen. "Virtual reality," he expanded, at Teyla's expression. "The programme running in the Stargate was like the Wraith dematerialising beam – it stored our physical patterns whilst uploading offworld events to our programming. The programme connected to the real Atlantis' records from time to time – looks like there's a lot of overlap."

"So none of it's real," says Ronon.

"No," says John.

"Yes," says Rodney. "Well, look, the offworld stuff and, yes, anything not actually on Atlantis, but this? The rest of it, here? Of course it's real. _We're_ real."

"We're tiny, nanite-sized fake people," disagrees John, and looks mournfully out of the window again, hair drooping slightly. "We're just copies of the real ones."

"Ha!" says Rodney, holding up a finger triumphantly. "That's where you're wrong! I happen to know for a fact that the big John and Rodney aren't…" The concept of Don't Ask, Don't Tell suddenly leaps to the forefront of Rodney's mind, and even thought that is now completely irrelevant unless they happen to decide that the way forward is to create an entire tiny nanite-sized Air Force complete with outmoded social mores, his eyes widen meaningfully. "_You know_!" he whispers, and makes a vague and yet totally crude gesture.

"OK," says Ronon. "Leaving now."

"I, too, will leave," says Teyla, looking slightly nauseated, and Rodney wonders if he was over-optimistic in assuming that no-one knew about the Gateroom mashed potato/moonshine/lawnmower sextoy incident.

"They're not having sex," he says, once the other half of their team has made a speedy exit. "Not, I might add, for want of lusting. McKay is clearly sexually frustrated. So, clearly, we are independent of them, ergo we are real and we will find out what to do with ourselves because who knows, maybe there are whole worlds of tiny people who will need us to rescue them and you to be ridiculously self-sacrificing and losing more limbs which are then – a ha! – conveniently replaceable."

"M…" says John.

"Also," continues Rodney, "I wish people would stop calling us nanite-sized. We are considerably bigger than that."

oOo

John finds Rodney on a balcony just beyond the main science lab.

"Hey," he says.

"It's a Cartesian nightmare," says Rodney.

"OK," says John.

"We might be tiny nanite-sized people in someone else's tiny Atlantis," says Rodney.

"Probably not, though," says John. "Our limbs aren't replaceable."

Rodney considers this. "There is that," he says, and the idea seems to perk him up.

"Any idea what they're going to decide to do?" John leans back, tilts his head to look up at the stars, and Rodney can feel the warmth of him radiating out.

"No idea," he admits. "But they're us, pretty much, so I'm sure they'll think of something."

John nods. "Guess so."

They sit on the balcony and don't talk about the fact that their tiny selves had butt sex in the tiny Gateroom, and rumour has it there's apparently some tiny blurred video that tiny Zelenka managed to send his counterpart.

THE END


End file.
